ToolBane

Write Makita a stern letter of complaint and demand they make them available again. So I can buy one too.

This is the primary reason I don’t see myself getting a table saw. You can move a big sheet of wood to get a “precise” cut vs moving a saw along a guided track? It’s kind of a no-brainer in my mind.

LOVE the trim router. The dust-clearing/visibility aspect is what puts it over the top in my mind. Coming from an old 1/2” corded that spewed all the sawdust everywhere, this thing is amazing. I haven’t flogged this thing with anything too heavy, and not sure the necessity is likely to come up for me anyway.

Towmaytow Tahmahtow I’ll have some gazpacho

Cool enough that I’ll wait until I see it in stock for the miter and plunge saws I’m looking forward to getting. Too bad it wasn’t already on the trim router I picked up a couple months ago. Man having the vac hooked up on that thing is awesome.

Depends on what we’re talking about. In the States Makita lately has mostly only been using white on their older (and possibly outgoing) 12V line. A lot of the designs they use in that line they just copied and made blue for their initial 12V CXT models. Although both use 12 volts batteries they can’t be interchanged with each other, and LXT batteries can’t be used on them either. They might look cute but I think the white 12V in your case is counterproductive as that’s effectively just like adding another battery platform. Also they’re very “light duty” in design and are unlikely to get many more products if any down the road. More recently I notice they may be trying to do use white for some of their older, “budget” LXT models. Not something I specifically gravitate toward but hey if you like it more than the standard teal...

They’re showing up as available on their website, so “Winter 2018” must have meant January/February 2018, not December 2018.

They may as well start making gym equipment. Funny thing is I can see myself buying it.

I design and build them. This particular pair was for my brother.

If cost doesn’t matter the first thing I would do is just go full-Makita at home since you already have their LXT platform. Unless you have some really substantial need for a big heavy drill, just one of Makita’s subcompact or compact drills could probably replace both of your home drills which lets you get rid of the Black and Decker stuff. Also easy to replace the old Dewalt impact with Makita. Viola...one home platform. Then replace the Dewalt stuff at work with Milwaukee. You might be able to sell all the Dewalt Nicad stuff (home and work) in some sort of package deal. Nothing wrong with Dewalt in absolute terms but your Dewalt stuff is all older gen on an older format. I like the fact that they offer an adapter so you can power legacy tools with newer lithium batteries but to do that necessitates buying into yet another platform which seems counterproductive. As far as Ryobi is concerned, I like them just fine. Growing up they were my backup option any time Dewalt’s premium prices didn’t feel sensible, and I’ve never had a Ryobi let me down. The price makes them crazy accessible to cover those pesky “in-between” tasks. Plus especially now they have so many atypical products that are so useful. I kinda wouldn’t mind if they moved just a hair upscale, and maybe their recent move to brushless products and larger batteries signals they may be doing just that.

I can’t imagine 9Ah batteries will be that easy to make cheap yet when so many manufacturers who cost a lot more don’t have them yet. Mostly I think Ridgid and Ryobi were just getting more early speculation and talk about it since they are owned by TTI like Milwaukee.

This is where my vote goes...

I got that new Makita and it is my favorite cordless tool. I haven’t flogged it to any level yet that I would recommend it over a big corded unit for heavy work though. It does NOT accept 1/2” bits though which I’d take as an unsubtle hint of what they want it used for. That aside it is AWESOME. I love the precision of it, the light placement is great, the build quality superb. Best of all the shield/vacuum attachment clears sawdust SO well I feel okay saying that using the tool is sublime. Also nice is it is compatible with attachments they already have for some of their corded models.

If this is the new brushless model, I saw some YouTube review or another that showed it can be a bit more prone to cutting out (ie being overloaded such that protection circuitry kills the motor) than many of the pricier “prosumer” companies. Though they also noted you can generally still go a little gentle on it and get perfectly adquate use out of it. Not necessarily applicable to that review but I see those online things and think some get just a little too caught up in the torture test aspects of it. What size of automotive bolts an impact driver can pull just doesn’t matter when all you’re going to do with it is drive 2” screws and maybe multiple speeds with a lot of modulation will do a lot more for you.

So far I’ve successfully stayed within 2 platforms. Like most DIY types I prefer to minimize how many platforms I have to buy into but if some products are exclusive to some platforms so be it. Makita happens to cover most of the bases that pertain to what I do, and Ryobi has a couple “oddball” (yet not really oddball) things that forced my hand. Which is fine Ryobi isn’t a terribly expensive platform to jump into. Interestingly M12 has some products I don’t see anywhere else (yet) but as Milwaukee’s 12V line it is also not a huge investment to jump into. It’s a trigger I have yet to pull though.

I’m entirely against brand “loyalty” although I’m fine to acknowledge one brand did “win” me over to be my primary platform...for now. Same time a realist has to acknowledge any platform can have the lead over any given segment of the market. Like I would estimate Makita as being the industry leader in impact drivers, Milwaukee in impact wrenches, and Dewalt certainly seems to excel in drills. That could change in a heartbeat though and tomorrow I’ll say something else if that’s what the evidence shows. Within these limits you could let your priorities dictate which line you pick up if you only want one battery platform. But at the same time if you’re just getting a few generic tools you can also go for whatever color you like and it’s not like it would really be the “wrong” decision. Milwaukee and Dewalt make some awfully good impact drivers. Dewalt and Makita have some really good impact wrenches. Milwaukee and Makita have some pretty solid drills. Skip them all and go for Bosch, Festool, Hilti, whatever. And sometimes whichever company has the best product at any given time has more to do with who has the most recent release than anything anyway. Thing to me from my experience across all my hobbies, no matter how much you may like a given brand one year, five years down the road someone buys them out, or they restructure, whatever, and they go down the tubes...will you have wasted a bunch of money continuing to buy them “just cuz” or are you going to be smart and hop on board the company that rises up in its place? I make it a point to be the latter guy anywhere I can. The issue of “made in America [with global materials]” seems to have drawn some attention in this thread. I’m fine with a global economy, but even if “Made in America” mattered to me, I can’t help but be REALLY cynical about the “with global materials” qualifier. Because I don’t see Dewalt or anyone else deriving any benefit or heck perhaps even having any ability to source a lot of the parts that go into modern tools domestically. Does anyone really think you’re going to get superior LEDs manufactured in the states? Circuit boards with pulse-width modulating controllers? Or would doing such just leave you with a shoddier tool that ALSO cost more to make? Anyone in the states qualified to supervise the manufacture of such things with any level of competency are already getting paid too much at Intel or Microsoft to waste their time with that sort of thing. Not researching it myself but hard to me to not think all the difficult work is done in China and most of the “made in America” thing is $13/hr kids working part-time doing final assembly. Better ways to help America’s economy out IMO. Maybe some of the steel bits and such could be done here. Still hard to beat American steel.

Makita’s cordless trim router

https://www.makitatools.com/products/details/XSL04ZU I’m liking that they’re going ahead and adding the AWS feature to these tools that really are still relatively new. The plunge and miter saws are two of the bigger tools I still need to get.

Glad I didn’t pick up a pair of 4Ah this holiday season. Even though it would have been a steal if I had anyway.

Lithium batteries and brushless motors have been hitting both the R/C and tool scenes so much lately this almost seems inevitable

Good work, m.k. Always nice to stumble into people with some technical prowess that will take a moment to comment in detail.

I myself went ahead and just bought into the Ryobi platform mostly for the glue gun. It’s so inexpensive anyway even for a couple different little tools. I think their glue gun kit with a little battery and charger is all of seventy US dollars. I also got their mattress inflator and was initially going to get their buffer until I realized Makita’s orbital sander conveniently has attachments for that exact purpose. Sure I would prefer everything to fit under one battery platform but there is simply no single company that offers everything that every other company has. Makita happens to have the most for my purposes by a long shot so that was still an easy decision. I’m holding out for the faint possibility Makita releases a soldering iron and shameless Dremel knockoff a la what Milwaukee has in their 12 volt line. Maybe I wait for it, maybe I don’t but my Dremel right now is in sorry shape and a cordless soldering iron would make so many of my projects so much easier.

Sheesh looking at the brushless 12CXT jigsaws they just released, they still have the two other 12volt models, they have two solid 18LXT jigs in the states plus barrel grips in other markets already, now they want to do subcompacts too? They all look good and I like jigsaws just fine (recently picked up the brushless LXT) but I tend to think of them as somewhat of a niche tool and wonder if there’s really room for all of these in the market. Am I underestimating how many other people use these things?

Sounds like smart speculation. Like everything else it won’t be Makita Milwaukee or anyone else making the cells themselves but buying from Samsung, Sony etc whenever they are able to release cells. If we aren’t hearing about solid state coming soon from anywhere else it probably isn’t coming to tools soon either.